She shrugged. “I’ve heard it’s supposed to be quite fun.”

“Actually,” I added, looking down, “it was a harvest for a Purple offspring. Dad showed her the egg shade last night—she’s with my child.”

Jane raised an eyebrow. “And all this with the collusion of the head prefect?”

“With a one hundred percent fatality rate, I wasn’t expected to make it back. I think the plan was for her to lament my loss and then marry Doug as planned. He’d never know it wasn’t his son.”

She shook her head sadly. “That’s Purples for you. Now, listen,” she added, rummaging in her bag while I stood there blinking stupidly to myself. “We need to take some precautions, you and I. Try to think of nothing.”

She had a compact much like the one Travis had used to keep his lime. She flicked it open, and the color—a rampant Gordini, I think—seemed to come flooding out and fill my vision. My entire left side went immediately numb, then began to burn with the sensation of a million pins and needles.

“Good afternoon!” said a cheery voice. I blinked, for there in front of me was a young man in a tidy grey suit with the splashy paint tin logo of National Color embroidered on the left breast. “Thank you for accessing Gordini Protocol NC7-Z. Please be patient while reconfiguration is in progress.”

“I can see someone,” I whispered, leaning closer to Jane.

“Just relax. Keep staring at the Gordini and tell me when you hear the big dogs.”

“If you suffer any undue discomfort during reconfiguration,” continued the young man in a jolly singsong sort of voice, “you may wish to seek assistance with customer services, available on .” He smiled again.

“National Color. Here for your convenience. And remember, feedback helps us help you.”

And he vanished. I continued to stare at the Gordini, as did Jane. The pins and needles were replaced by the smell of freshly baked bread and I could hear my twice-widowed aunt Beryl talking about cats, which she never did. And through it all, music and onions.

“Mantovani.”

“I get Brahms. Keep staring.”

The edge of my vision fringed with all the colors of the rainbow, and then, for a brief and very exciting moment, I could see in full color. It was like the world had been transformed into a color garden—but one that exhibited not the limited CYM palette of National Color, but an infinite variety of hues, delicately complementing and enhancing one another in a complex Chromatic harmony—I could even see the off-gamut violets, a color I had never seen before. The world as it was meant to look.

“It’s . . . beautiful!”

I then heard the sound of rushing water. My fingers snapped straight and I blinked uncontrollably.

“Got the dogs yet?”

“No, I’m still at blinking.”

And then they started up. Terriers yipping and wailing in an annoying fashion as the pathways in my head cross-fired. Light to sound, smell to memory, touch to music, and color to everything.

“Small dogs any good?” I asked.

“Keep at it.”

The small dogs were joined by medium-sized dogs, then finally the deep, throaty woofs of Great Danes.

They were joined by bloodhounds and wolfhounds, and pretty soon my head was full of dogs doing nothing but barking, whining and panting.

“Big dogs.”

She snapped the compact shut, and the sound abruptly cut out. I staggered for a moment.

“Steady,” she said, holding my elbow.

“What was that?”

“Precautions. A little bit of reconfiguring in the cortex. The big dogs just indicate you’re done—like the whistle on a kettle. Make a note of the time. We’ve got a couple of hours to be safe.”

“I saw colors. Real colors. And a Pooka.”

“He’s actually a Herald. A lost page from a missing book. He’s always there and always says the same thing.”

But I wasn’t really listening; I had far too many questions.

“You said ‘precautions’? And what do you mean, ‘We’ve got a couple of hours’? A couple of hours for what?”

“All in good time, Red. Come on, we better catch up with Courtland.”

“The Herald said something about ‘Gordini Protocols.’ What are they?”

“Trust me, Red, all in good time.”

We found Courtland waiting for us at a stone meetinghouse that was smothered with heavy ivy and still a creditable two stories high.

“Thought I’d lost you,” he said. “Get a load of this!”

He pointed inside the meetinghouse. The roof had vanished long ago, and the floor was covered in a thick carpet of moss. Floating just inside the doorway was an elegant craft about the size of a Ford. It was definitly a vehicle of some sort, but without wheels and constructed entirely of floatie material.

Despite a thick layer of lichen and creepers that were draped on it from above, it was still drifting free. A yard-high mark around the inside of the meeting house showed where it had moved about with the air currents, scraping against the walls. The only reason it had not drifted out and eventually made its way to the sea was that the meetinghouse door had partially collapsed, blocking its only escape. I placed my hand on the craft but, even by pulling hard, could make it dip only a small amount.

“At least six hundred negative pounds,” murmured Courtland, “spoons, a complete floatie. This place has riches in abundance—am I glad I came!”

I looked at Jane, who said nothing, and we moved off. The road we had been following was soon joined by a second that snaked in from the north. But it wasn’t any easier going. If anything, it was worse. The road was covered with the grassed-over lumps of rubble, long-rusted wreckage, stunted trees trying to grow as best they could on the thin soil, and at times impenetrable rhododendron that had to be skirted around, further slowing our progress.

“Where does the Perpetulite start?” asked Courtland.

“About a mile down the way,” Jane replied. 

I looked at my watch. “We’re getting pressed for time. At this rate all we’ll manage is a quick look around before we need to head back.”

“You won’t want any more than that.”

After thirty minutes of scrambling over debris, we finally arrived at the Perpetulite. It was a four-lane roadway of perfect grey-black compound, and the bronze pins had been driven in closer together than at Bleak Point, so the spalling was less severe.

“Thank Munsell for that,” breathed Courtland, emptying a bootful of earth and sitting on the glossy black central barrier. The roadway even had Perpetulite lampposts of a much more modern design than the iron posts I was used to, and the lightglobes, where still present, were alight.

We walked down the road, which seemed somehow more incongruous here in the depopulated wasteland than at home. There, at least, there was someone to use the road or even see it; here it existed purely for its own sake.